'Of course,' Don said, and started to say something, but Ricky was already asleep.
Shortly after ten o'clock, Peter and Don, who had eaten downstairs, brought a grilled steak, a salad and a bottle of burgundy up to Ricky's room. Another plate on the tray held a second steak for Stella. Don knocked on the door, heard Ricky say 'Come in,' and entered, carrying the heavy tray.
Stella Hawthorne, her hair in a scarf, looked up at Don from beside her husband on the guest-room bed. 'I woke up an hour or so ago,' she said, 'and I got lonely, so I came down here to Ricky. Is that food? Oh, you're lovely, both of you.' She smiled at Peter, who was standing shyly in the door.
'While the two of you were eating us out of house and home I had a little talk with Stella,' Ricky said. He took the tray and put it on Stella's lap, and then removed one of the plates. 'What luxury this is! Stella, we should have had maids years ago.'
'I think I mentioned that once,' Stella said. Though still obviously shaken and exhausted by shock, Stella had improved enormously during the evening; she did not look like a woman in her forties now, and perhaps she never would again, but her eyes were clear.
Ricky poured wine for himself and Stella and cut off a piece of steak. 'There's no doubt that the man who picked up Stella was the same one who followed you, Peter. He even told Stella that he was a Jehovah's Witness.'
'But he was
'I know,' Ricky said, and turned to the other two again. 'But after she came back with help, the body was gone.'
'Will you please tell me what is going on?' Stella said, now almost in tears.
'I will,' said Ricky, 'but not now. We're not finished yet. I'll explain everything to you this summer. When we get out of Milburn.'
'Out of Milburn?'
'I'm going to take you to France. We'll go to Antibes and St. Tropez and Aries and anywhere else that looks good. We'll be a pair of funny-looking old tourists together. But first you have to help us. Is that all right with you?'
Stella's practicality saw her through. 'It is if you're really promising, and not just bribing me.'
'Did you see anything else around the car when you came back with Leon Churchill?' Don asked.
'No one else was there,' Stella replied, calmer again.
'I don't mean another person. Any animals?'
'I don't remember. I felt so-sort of unreal. No, nothing.'
'You're sure? Try to remember how it looked. The car, the open door, the snowbank you hit-'
'Oh,' she said, and Ricky paused with the fork halfway to his mouth. 'You're right. I saw a dog. Why is that important? It jumped on top of the snowbank from someone's yard, and then jumped down onto the street. I noticed it because it was so beautiful. White.'
'That's it,' Don said.
Peter Barnes looked back and forth from Don to Ricky, his mouth open.
'Wouldn't you like some wine, Peter? And you, Don?' Ricky asked.
Don shook his head, but Peter said, 'Sure,' and Ricky passed him his glass.
'Can you remember anything the man said?'
'It was all so horrible… I thought he was crazy. And then I thought he knew me because he called me by name, and he said I shouldn't go to Montgomery Street because you weren't there anymore-where were you?'
'I'll tell you all about it over a Pernod. This spring.'
'Anything else you remember?' Don asked. 'Did he say where he was taking you?'
'To a friend,' Stella said, and shuddered. 'He said I'd see a mystery. And he talked about Lewis.'
'Nothing more about where his friend was?'
'No. Wait. No.' She looked down at her plate, and pushed the tray down toward the foot of the bed. 'Poor Lewis. That's enough questions. Please.'
'You'd better leave us,' Ricky said.
Peter and Don were at the door when Stella said, 'I remember. He said he was taking me to the Hollow. I'm sure he said that.'
'That's enough for now,' Ricky said. 'See you in the morning, gentlemen.'
And in the morning, Peter and Don were startled to find Ricky Hawthorne already in the kitchen when they came down. He was scrambling eggs, pausing now and then to blow his nose into Kleenex from a convenient box. 'Good morning. Do you want to help me think about the Hollow?'
'You ought to be in bed,' Don said.
'Like the dickens I ought to be in bed! Can't you smell how
'I can only smell eggs,' Don said. 'Peter, get some plates out of the cupboard.'
'How many houses are there in the Hollow? Fifty? Sixty? No more than that. And she's
'In there waiting for us,' Don said, and Peter, putting plates on the Hawthorne's kitchen table, paused and set the final plate down more slowly. 'And we must have had two feet of snow last night. It's still snowing. You wouldn't call it a blizzard anymore, but we could easily have another blizzard by this afternoon. There's a snow emergency over most of the state. Do you want to hike over to the Hollow and knock on fifty or sixty doors?'
'No, I want us to think,' Ricky said, and carried the pan of eggs to the table and spooned a portion onto each plate. 'Let's get some bread in the toaster.'
When everything was ready, toast and orange juice and coffee, the three of them ate breakfast, following Ricky's lead. He seemed vibrant, sitting at the table in his blue dressing gown; almost elated. And he had obviously been thinking a great deal about the Hollow and Anna Mostyn.
'It's the one part of town we don't know well,' Ricky said. 'And that's why she's there. She doesn't want us to find her yet. Presumably she knows that her creatures are dead. For the moment, her plans have been delayed. She'll want reinforcements, either more like the Bates or more like herself. Stella got rid of the only other one around with a hatpin.'
'How do you know he was the only other one?' Peter asked.
'Because I think we would have encountered any others, if they were here.'
They ate in silence for a moment.
'So I think she's just holed up-in a vacant building, most likely-until more of them arrive. She won't be expecting us. She'll think we won't be able to move, in this snow.'
'And she'll be vengeful,' Don said.
'She might also be afraid.'
Peter snapped his head up. 'Why do you say that?'
'Because I helped kill her once before. And I'll tell you something else. If we don't find her soon, everything we have done will be wasted. Stella and the three of us bought time for the whole town, but as soon as outside traffic gets in…' Ricky bit into a piece of toast. 'Things will be even worse than before. She won't just be vengeful, she'll be rabid. Twice we've blocked her. So we'd better lay out everything we can come up with about the Hollow. And we'd better do it now.'
'Wasn't it originally the place where the servants lived?' Peter asked. 'Back when everybody had servants?'
'Yes,' Ricky said, 'but there has to be more. I'm thinking of what she said on Don's tape. 'In the places of your dreams.' We found one of those places, but I'm thinking that there must be another one, someplace where we could have been lured if we hadn't found Gregory and Fenny at the Rialto. But I just can't think…'
'Do you know anybody who lives there?' Don asked.
'Of course I do. I've lived here all my life. But I can't for the life of me see the connection…'
'What did the Hollow used to be like?' Peter asked. 'In the old days.'
'In the old days? Back when I was a boy, you mean?
Oh, much different-much nicer. It was a lot cleaner than it is now. A bit raffish. We used to think of it as the Bohemian section of town. There was a painter who lived in Milburn then-did magazine covers. He lived there, and
